This Week in SABR: May 20, 2011

How has the role of major league general managers changed over the years? Check out the General Managers Panel at SABR 41, moderated by SABR member and SB Nation baseball editor Rob Neyer, to find out. The panel is scheduled for 3 p.m. on Saturday, July 9 at the Long Beach Hilton in Southern California.

Expected panelists include:

Jed Hoyer, current general manager of the San Diego Padres

Fred Claire, former Dodgers general manager from 1987-98

Dan Evans, former Dodgers general manager from 2001–04 and now a consultant to the industry

Days after announcing he would give up his fight against esophageal cancer, Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew, 74, died May 17 at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona.

SABR member Jim Thielman, who covered the Minnesota Twins as a journalist from 1977 to 1993 and is the author of Cool of the Evening: The 1965 Minnesota Twins, looked back at the rocky beginning of Killebrew's major league career, which was hampered by the post-World War II "bonus baby" rule. But after spending most of two seasons on the bench, Thielman wrote, he "became the corner lot on which owner Calvin Griffith built the Minnesota Twins."

SABR member Paul Dickson was announced Monday as the recipient of the 2011 Tony Salin Memorial Award by the Baseball Reliquary, a Southern California-based nonprofit dedicated to fostering an appreciation of American art and culture through the context of baseball history.

The Tony Salin Memorial Award — named in honor of the baseball historian, researcher, and Reliquarian who passed away in 2001 — was established in 2002 to recognize individuals for their commitment to the preservation of baseball history. Reliqary director Terry Cannon is also a member of SABR.

Dickson is the author of nearly 60 nonfiction books, including The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, which was awarded the 1989 Macmillan-SABR Award for Baseball Research (now called the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award).

Afterward, SABR member Christina Kahrl sat down with authors Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg, who won this year's Seymour Medal for their book 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York.

Kahrl — the keynote speaker for the conference — asked them about their book and why contemporary fans should care about a season from nine decades ago. Their interview is posted in the link above.

Note: Pete Palmer and other SABR members were recently asked an open-ended question: Why are you a SABR member?

"I joined pretty early; I think I was #27. If I had realized that Cooperstown was only a four-hour drive, I would have been at the kickoff meeting [on August 10, 1971].

Bob Davids was familiar with me since we both contributed to The Sporting News, and the fact that the editors decided to pretty much dispense with fan contributions encouraged Bob to start SABR in the first place. The three main reasons I have enjoyed SABR were meeting the guys, reading the publications and participating in research projects that would have been very difficult to do on my own."

A comprehensive historical and geographical listing of all professional spring training locations was compiled by the Spring Training Research Committee and is made available online at SABR's website.

You can choose to search by professional teams' home cities (use this one if you want to find every spring training location for teams based in Boston or San Diego, etc.); or you can search by spring training host city (for instance, if you want to find all the professional teams that have ever held spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida, or Tempe, Arizona, etc.)